Thoughts...

MSQ
Oh boy... where to start. Guess I'll start with the Echo which is the easiest. And very, very weird to the point of being suspicious. For starters, not everyone who sees the Starshower gets the Echo. Which makes everyone on the plaza hearing Hydaelyn's voice very odd just by itself. And speaking of Hydaelyn's voice, why are they even hearing it? Hydaelyn hasn't talked to us since 3.4 at the latest, and even then she needed Minfillia as an intermediary. The last time we actually heard Hydaelyn herself was back in 3.0 briefly. And even then there was a lot of "static" in the way. It boggles the mind that a bunch of random nobodies would hear Hydaelyn's "Hear, Feel, Think" mantra and we wouldn't. I am very suspicions that visual illusions aren't the only kind of illusions Elidibus can make and that he somehow made everyone hear Hydaelyn's famous catchphrase. Except the one person who knows exactly what Hydaelyn really does sound like since when Hydaelyn could talk, she wouldn't stop talking to us (or trying to talk to us in 3.x).

As for why Elidibus would want to wake the Echo up in people... The Ascians have been having issues with getting killed recently. Between us, Ardbert and Gaius, they're down a bunch of members and anyone that does get made into an Ascian needs to have the Echo. Widening the pool of people they can raise up into Ascians is probably something that needs to happen at this point. It also directly attacks the Scions' base on the Source by depriving it of manpower.

The revelation that Hydaelyn and Zoidark both had hearts that were essentially people is interesting. Makes me wonder what the difference is between that and the Guardian Force Quetzalcoatl we fought in the Academia. Another interesting thing is that the 14th Convocation member who left the Convocation is directly referred to as a defector here, but they apparently were not part of Hydaelyn's summoning. At least... not at this point. There's a lot of food for thought here, but not much by way of answers. I do think there is enough information to know that both Hydaelyn and Zoidark are very, very sophisticated primals compared to what we are used to dealing with.

Other random things... The WoL figuring out Ardbert is Elidibus by giving Ardbert the cue to fist-bump them and Elidibus having no idea what to do is adorable. Cylla's reaction to finding out that Arbert is possessed is... really fun to watch.

Eden
This felt like the ending of Eden, Part 1. All the basic elements were restored to the Empty and where the story goes from here feels rather... nebulous. Not the least in that we still have no idea who Gaia really is. Sure, she has some connection to the Darkness, but we have no idea what kind of connection it really is. There was also a massive spoiler for the 5.3 or 5.4 MSQ as Urianger and Thancred say they are leaving the project. I just feel like we have no good hints about what comes next to really warrant looking forwards to the final tier of the raid in 5.4

This also is the most frustrated I have been with Urianger, Thancred and Ryne. In a way, it kinda shows how ridiculous this whole raid series has felt. Who in their right minds goes around summoning primals on purpose? Why does Ryne try to control Shiva? Gaia is less stupid, but still frustrating for other reasons. Although her reasons at least make more sense. By this point, we all know how messed up Eulmore was and thinking about what growing up there would have been like... Finding out what the real world outside Eulmore is like would be frustrating enough even without the memory loss.

The single most interesting thing for me out of Eden, was the shape of the Idol of Darkness (3rd boss). It looks exactly like the platform all the Zoidark statues are standing in front of, just with a crystal between the two "horns" instead of a Zoidark statue. So what is up with that?

Werlyt
If the MSQ and Eden were rather light on angst this patch... this story is going to be making up for that in heaps. Go figure. Out of all the Garleans we've run into, Gaius is really the only this kind of story could have worked with. And it's really interesting seeing his tenancies of caring more about who people are (rather then where they're from) get turned around on him. Only Gaius is who he is and he knows the Weapon project has to go down no matter that it's his kids who are manning it. Cue the angst since you're pretty much the guy who killed their sister in Ruby Weapon (and are probably going to end up killing all of them at this rate).

On the flip side, it looks like Cid has at least sorted out something in his head about Gaius. Namely that Gaius was a better dad to him than Midas was. This probably says more about how much Midas neglected Cid than anything else. But I get the feeling we'll be learning a lot more about Midas when we get to Bozja.

Gaius having a different relationship with Severa vs Valdeaulin has the potential to go a lot of places. Severa seems to be loyal enough to Gaius that he trusts her, but Valdeaulin... heh. Raubahn isn't the only one who doesn't want Gaius going back to Garlemald. I really wonder how the three of them got to the point where they went Ascian hunting together.